Wicked Games
by Nightmare Prince
Summary: "Why do you like hurting me?"


**Note: A more explicit version of this fic is available at my Archive of Our Own Account.**

 **archiveofourown(dott)org(backslash)works(backslash)4593918**

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 **Wicked Games**

 **.o0o.**

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 _"Why do you like hurting me?"_

 _._

Your harsh fingers dig into my waist, trailing over the mottled caress of black and blue that you've left in your wake. You make me grit my teeth, and the force you use is enough to make me cry out in pain. Your thumbs crush into my slender hips, and I can feel the ache in my bones.

You make me question myself, you make me forget my pride.

You make me beg for more, and you break me, both inside and out.

Your lips capture mine, and I'm forced to cringe as you bite down so hard that my lower lip bleeds. The taste of copper floods my mouth, and it's an overload to my senses, and I whimper in your grasp.

Because you're so terrible at asking for what you want, but you're just so good at taking what you need.

I hook a leg around your waist, the sole of my bare foot pressing into your thigh as I raise myself up on my tiptoes with the other. It's difficult to hold the position, but you help, grasping both my wrists with one hand and holding them above my head.

It's painful, and oh so glorious, and I just can't help but wail in both agony and bliss as you fuck me raw against the wall.

You've always had me running and you've always been chasing, only I've never run _from you_ , just as you've never really _chased after me._ Instead, it's you chasing power, it's you seeking control, and it's me running, not from, but towards the pain you leave in your wake.

You're hunting freedom, and I'm content to simply bear the consequences upon my trembling shoulders.

A part of me loathes myself for being your broken toy, yours to use and abuse. It's overruled, of course it is, by the part that craves you and you alone.

I know my worth, and it's little more than the dust beneath your boot, because the sins of my forebears stain my name in ways that time itself cannot erase. I also know yours, a prince born to a world that needs a king.

You're perfect in your imperfections, just as I am a hollow wraith of a boy long since beaten into submission by the very world that rests a crown upon your brows. It amuses me, in my quiet moments, when I lay trembling in your arms.

My only crime is being born, and thus, I am hated.

Your crimes are darker than the blood of the devil himself, and yet you are loved.

Is it then even stranger that the only time I feel golden is when I'm buckling beneath your pain, when you're baring to me your tarnished soul?

I hiss, sliding down against the wall as you release me, and I can feel your tears against my back. You hate having to hurt me to find your solace, and yet, it is the only thing you know. I gasp, feeling about my chest and realising that you've, once more, broken a rib in your zeal.

You kneel behind me, and it's a rare moment of vulnerability, and it's in these little shreds of time that I can feel that there is more to you that hate. You're as broken as I am, and yet the shards of our shattered forms fit together in a perfect embrace, like porcelain and gold.

I feel your hand ghost across my chest, gingerly tracing the damage, measuring in my hisses. Your lips press to my shoulder, the very shoulder you've dislocated thrice over the years, and you press a gentle kiss to my bloody skin.

We are born into a cruel world, and together we are each other's darkest moments, but it comforts me that my body breaks as much as your heart. Your soul is a monstrosity, twisted and destroyed by your very birth. Mine is whole, and in a way we reflect each other, our eyes showing the tears across our seams.

"I'm sorry," you whisper, and I know you are. In the beginning, I despised you, the burly fifth year who'd hold me down and smash me to pieces upon the floor. I'd go to sleep dreaming of your death, and of your torture, and I'd spend my days trying my hardest to escape.

You'd take all I had and then some, but I've never willingly given till I saw that you truly are the devil. Before your fall, you shone the brightest.

"Don't cry, James," I murmur, shifting myself around even though it hurts to move. You're broken, it's who you are, a victim of a madman's soul latching itself onto both your mother and your father, the lingering fragments coming together to break your mind before you'd even escaped the womb.

Wrapping my legs around your waist, I settle in your lap, and I run a finger beneath your eye. Your tears smudge against the dried blood and seed upon my fingers, but I keep wiping till your eyes are dry.

The kiss you give me is soft and sweet, and now your arms cradle my injured body. I'm shaking like a leaf, even as I try to ignore the burning pain, but you keep my steady. You're holding me up as though you're not the one who's beaten me down, and I cup your cheeks in my hands as I kiss you.

My lips part for your tongue, and you enter, tracing every contour of my mouth. I can taste the tears on your lips, just as you can taste the blood on mine, and it's an explosion of copper and salt across our tongues.

"How bad?" you ask, and I shake my head. It isn't your fault you're damaged, and I hate burdening you with the fragility of my form. The darkness in you empowers you, and your violence is often more than I can endure. But I'm breaking not broken, and I need you to understand that.

Your rages and your darkness are but facets of who you are, a sadistic side that dwarfs the gentle man I know you to be.

So maybe I'm a masochist, because I've never run, and I never will.

It's insane that I still think I can save you, after all you've broken within me, but I know that I can.

You see me as both a game and a crutch, because like a coin you have two sides. They're often concealed one another, somehow coexisting in an imperfect balance. Harsh and raw as it may seem from the outside looking in, it's all that holds your beating heart together.

Between the bruises, the punches, and the open wounds, I've fallen in love, and I just don't know if it's love for the pain, or for you, the one inflicting it.

 _._

 _"Why do you keep coming back for more?"_


End file.
